Our Chicago: Peace Portraits Honorees
CHICAGO (WLS) -- Six people working each day to build safer, stronger and more peaceful communities are being honored by Peace Portraits.
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It's an initiative presented by the Illinois Peace Project.
This year's honorees include a woman working to keep kids off the street, another using art to raise awareness of missing women and a man trying to prevent gun violence in the city.
Camille Travis is the Communications Manager at Metropolitan Peace Initiatives and created Peace Portraits.
"Peace Portraits is a visual series that we do for the Illinois Peace Project," Travis said. "We focus on people who are just doing great work in the community to build safer and more peaceful communities. And so, we have six honorees this year and Peace Portraits we tell their story through a whole editorial package. So, we have a video package that showcases their work and their journey. A written feature for them and also the portraits."
This is the second year for the Peace Portraits.
Travis says it began because they wanted to bring more awareness to the Illinois Peace Project and also community violence intervention.
"I think the best way to tell those stories is to let the people who do the work tell how they do it and show the work directly," Travis said. "We wanted to show kind of like a different narrative. I know we hear a lot about the gun violence in Chicago and all that's going on. But we wanted to tell the other side of that and show the people that are actually doing the work to bring peace to the neighborhoods."
Tavares Harrington is the outreach supervisor at the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago. He is one of the honorees.
He currently works in Chicago's Austin neighborhood.
"We try and focus on the highest at risk that are possibly going to be involved with violence or a perpetrator of violence. We try to offer them services through either programming, workforce development, CVI as well as GED education," Harrington said.
Harrington says efforts are working and that people are getting a second chance.
In 2012, his 7-year-old niece was killed when she got caught in the crossfire between two groups. That's what motivates him to do this work.
"I just wanted to just get out here and help these young individuals. Help my neighborhood, help my community," he said.
For more information on the Peace Portraits Honorees:
